As this course surveys various disciplines within the social sciences, your final paper is directly tied into navigating the varying ways one can approach a certain topic. Think about it similarly to the Eller text: he is regularly noting how certain questions are addressed differently by each discipline and does a special focus each chapter on terrorism. You are going to do the same thing, just on a topic of your own choosing.

While you’re not needing to get into a polemical debate between the disciplines, you are going to need to choose a social science topic of interest to you to assemble a set of readings to help you adjudicate it.

To get things going, this assignment has you proposing a topic. This allows us to make sure that you’re on the right track in terms of choosing a project that is explicitly social in nature.

For this assignment, please submit an approximately .5 to 1-page, double-spaced, size 12 Times New Roman font, 1-inch margined page detailing the following the items. Please note that Canvas will only accept the following file types: .doc, .docx, or .pdf

Your topic must contain the following elements

• Topic:
  • The broad topic in which you’re interested. Also, why are you interested in this topic/area of study?
    • For example, you can look to something like, “The social factors influence diet,” “Families and the Great Recession” or “Music and social life”
  • Give some pre-emptive insight into your thoughts: what do you think the is inherently social (regardless of discipline) about this topic?
  • What do you already know about this topic?
• How would you think about approaching this?
  • Do you have an early inkling on what sort of disciplinary approach might be best suited to this question? Why do you think this discipline is so well suited?

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What is below are the parameters of the final project so you can see what you’re working toward. You are not doing this right now, this is just so you know what you’ll be doing with the topic you’re proposing.

Your final paper serves as a culmination of what we’ve been covering throughout this course. It is aimed at pushing you to position yourself as a social scientist, conceptualizing, approaching, and proposing a topic of interest to you.

To that end, the Research Paper contains the following, required items:

1. Introduction
2. Literature Review of differing perspectives on your topic
3. Summative integration and reflection on the ways the disciplines can work together
4. Conclusion
5. References

• Minimum of 6 full pages of text (note: this does not include your name/date of submission, references, etc.).